In Conversation: On Wyman and the Florida Knights

Larry Baker is the author of The Flamingo Rising: A Novel, later adapted into a TV movie; A Good Man, Love and Other Delusions: A Novel, and The Education of Nancy Adams. His latest Florida novel, Wyman and the Florida Knights (IceCube Press) begins in 1866 and ends on Election Day in 2016. Peter Wyman was the most famous portrait painter in America, but his fame had come with a high price – his mind and soul. Nearing the end of his life he wants to erase himself, but how? He decides to go into hiding. But where? He’s clueless until an aging blond cashier in St. Augustine points him in the right direction. It’s a place “north of Orlando, if it still exists. Ex-boyfriend of mine came from there and told me it was full of crazies. ... You want to disappear, you go to Knightville.” Craig Lancaster, author of And It Will Be a Beautiful Life: A Novel, noted that “Florida’s not just a place but an idea, a fever dream, a place to gamble and win big, and sometimes a place to lose it all. Larry Baker takes a big, imaginative swing … and hits a literary home run. It’s part Southern gothic, part history lesson, part adventure, and a fully immersive experience.”

Lynne Barrett is the editor of Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida – a collection of true, only-in-Miami road stories by 32 South Florida authors and suffering drivers – and the Florida Book Review.